15 March 2009

How Do You Get A Rewrite For Street Blades?

1978.On a street-blade safari today, and I got some good ones, but none as interesting as the ones at NE 148th and SE Stark and SE 148th and NE Glisan.

Didn't I get that wrong just there? Yep. So did whoever put up the street blades.

Also, I've been remiss. In my excitement over the apparently-revised look of the standard Portland street blade, I've left out mentioning there's apparently an entire new look for the major intersections, as well. Let's look:

The difference is of a class. Instead of having one type size handle the directional and the specific and smaller one for the generic on the Street blade and one type size for all type on the Avenue blade, we have one size for the directional and generic and a larger one for the specific on all blades.

This has the distinctive characteristic, via the design concept of hierarchy, to make the specifics (the street/avenue names themselves) come up front and center. While the supporting information is now smaller, it's uniformly so, but not so very small; moreover, these signs are about 20 per cent larger than the old design, so everything is large.

Also, due to what has to be some error (or perhaps a rift in the fabric of space that happened that I missed), Northeast Glisan Street at the corner of Glendoveer Golf Course is crossed, improbably, by Southeast 148th Avenue.

Going down to 148th and Stark, in the shadow of the 7-Eleven store, we have the same anomaly:

Also:

Isn't that second one kind of artistic, what with the lining-up with the overhead wires 'n' stuff. And can you believe that iStockphoto turned me the hell down!?!?! Yes, seriously! It's unjust.

The mistake at the southwest corner of 148th and Stark was repeated over on the southeast corner as well. Just looking at the signs is kind of mind-bending.

Can the city sign shop get rewrite on this? Or, put another way ... can we fix this in "post"?

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This Here Blogger

Graphic designer, writer, editor. Worker in the Big Machine; the quintessential working-class native Oregonian, I drive some of the grimier gears so the Big Cats and Kittens don't have to. Am in the process of reinventing myself as the artist I always ought to have been. My blog is The ZehnKatzen Times.

This sentence, courtesy of commenter "JD", will help you remember the initials in order:All Across Portland Our Streets Wind Around Mossy Yards. Traffic Snarls May Mean Jammed Cars, Cranky Motorists Making Minimal Headway. Harried Commuters Just Love Going Slow.

Commenter Dave DiNucci, using enough of the letters from each word to eliminate ambiguity, gives us the following two possiblilities: This first one plays on the fact that alphabetically-arranged streets going north from Burnside are named for Portland founders while those going south do not:ANcestors ASsociated Portland Oregon STreets With ALphabetic MORtals, Yet Toward SAlem, MAInly MADe JEjune, COLUmnar, CLiche MARked MIxtures. MONotones HARmonize HALfway, COLLiding JAuntily. Lines Gently SHim.

This second one is more poetic but less PDX-centered, but works the Gorge in, as well as Lincoln, Grant, and Sheridan: